24
Jul
More Ads On TV Debating Iraq Policy
TURKEY RESUMES BOMBING IN IRAQ AGAINST KURDS
OBAMA IN EUROPE
THE WEEKLY SPIN: The Air War over the Iraq War Heats Up
Source: NPR, July 18, 2008
Ads from groups weighing in on the U.S. presidential campaign “have begun getting sharper and more numerous,” reports NPR’s “All Things Considered.”
The conservative pro-war group Vets for Freedom has already spent $1.5 million on ads in such “key presidential states” as Michigan, Ohio, New Mexico, Pennsylvania and Virginia, with plans to “spend exponentially more.” Their ads show military veterans supporting Senator John McCain’s stance on Iraq, claiming, “The surge worked.” Ads from the AFL-CIO labor union also feature veterans, who express respect for McCain’s war record while questioning his plan “to keep spending $10 billion a month in Iraq.” Religious groups are also getting into the act. The Chicago-based political action committee Matthew 25 Network is supporting Senator Barack Obama with ads on Christian radio stations, which tend to draw conservative listeners. On the other side, the Christian Defense Council is distributing a poster that calls Obama the “abortion president.”
JEREMY SCAYHILL IN THE GUARDIAN: BLACKWATER STAYS
Blackwater is here to stay: Despite reports that the company is leaving the mercenary business, Blackwater’s future is secure
ON THE TRIALS IN THE HAGUE
Ness Schmidt writes from Costa Rica
“Hypocrisy seems to be at epidemic proportions. Karadzic is now facing a possible Hague visit for war crimes. There in is the rub. Bush is responsible for over 4 thousand American deaths in Iraq alone, more than 1.2 million Iraqi deaths and more than two and a half million displaced Iraqis due to the US’s illegal war on that country to gain control of all their natural resources. It seems to me Bush is the more likely candidate to be put at the Hague along with his VP and the entire complicit bunch of war criminals”
FROM THE UN: Karadzic to represent himself in war crimes trial at The Hague..His extradition will be delayed.
The Geeze Man writes: “I only have two worries about Barack; that they kill him before January 20, 2009, or that he gets caught diddlin’ some campaign intern between now and then as per John Edwards in a midnight meet with his lover and love child, as reported by LAist: “The story was so huge today, that a link from Drudge apparently crashed the National Enquirer’s website. ”
I loved the Enqurer headline I saw on the train: Titanic Victims Found On An Iceberg
WHATS YOUR FAVORITE BOOK?
Here are the results and analysis of The Disinformation Company’s “Favorite Books” MySpace Survey from Disinformation Managing Editor Ralph Bernardo. The overall top ten from their MySpace audience, surveyed from 1,074 responses, was:
1. Nineteen Eighty-Four, George Orwell
2. The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, Douglas Adams
3. Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, Hunter S. Thompson
4. The Lord of the Rings (Trilogy), J. R. R. Tolkien
5. Brave New World, Aldous Huxley
6. Slaughterhouse Five , Kurt Vonnegut
7. The Catcher in the Rye, J. D. Salinger
8. Tao Te Ching, Lao Tzu
9. The Illuminatus! Trilogy, Robert Shea & Robert Anton Wilson
10. Ishmael, Daniel Quinn
FROM MARK CRISPIN MILLER:
Support the Kucinich Impeachment Hearing on Friday Tell your Representatives to support impeachment by cosponsoring H. Res. 1345
WATCH: Krugman reveals the NYT urged him to ‘lay off’ the Bush administration.»
On Friday at the Netroots Nation conference, New York Times columnist Paul Krugman spoke on a panel about “How the media learned to bend over backwards to please the right.” Krugman discussed the right wing’s success at pressuring the media and how some of that filtered down to him:
KRUGMAN: I could see a little bit of the effects. I was never told to stop writing what I was writing. It was, however, made known to me that I was making management nervous. There were occasional, “Couldn’t you do more straight economics writing?” Pretty much the last time I heard that was in 2005, when I was sort of urged to lay off a bit. The words that stuck in my mind were, “The election settled some of these things.” Basically that all stopped with Katrina, actually.
FIRE AND BOMBS: REPORT FROM LEBANON
Forest fire rages amid munitions in Lebanon
BEIRUT (AFP) — Firemen battled a forest fire in Lebanon on Tuesday, amid exploding cluster bomb….
Crazy Day
I was on a 4 hour train ride back from DC that only took 5 ½ hours. Then I went to the book party for my partner Rory O’ Connor’s latest, SHOCK JOCKS (Alternet Books) on Hate Radio in the USA.
So I had little time to blog, but here’s a truncated version of what I usually do.
Thank you Verna Avery Brown for having me on your Pacifica program to talk about NACA and have a mini debate with a Wash Post reporter. Thank you NACA for giving me a chance to participate. Thank you reader for being there. Thank you body for holding up.
FINAL THOUGHTS: Bush explains US fiscal woes: Wall Street got drunk
Speaking at a Houston fundraiser last week, George Bush aired his considered opinion of the financial crisis facing the nation he leads.
FLASHBACK: THE ONION IN 2001: Bush: ‘Our Long National Nightmare Of Peace And Prosperity Is Finally Over’
Your Turn. Comments to dissector@mediachannel.org
Let’s go back one more time, with 20/20 hindsight, and take another look at the “scandal” that was used to force Elliott Spitzer out of office earlier this year.
If Spitzer was still the governor, there is no question he would have the N.Y. AG suing every one of these major financial institutions, and would have the AGs of many other states joining in a unified or class action lawsuit to try to grab back some of that profit, those obscene bonuses and “compensation” parachutes the insiders have paid to themselves with full knowledge that the actions of their companies, at their direction, would result in severe financial devastation to the country.
There is not a question in my mind that if Spitzer was still governor, we would not see this Democrat-sponsored sell-out of the people (I assume in exchange for enormous bribes paid to them by the boys on Wall Street), get by relatively unchallenged, fraudulently labeled as “help” for homeowners when it’s truly just another looting of the citizens’ money by the elite. Elite Dems and Elite Repubs. (The Elite don’t really have a strong party affiliation — just whoever’s got the money. They share that in common with most of our politicians).
So knowing that this would not get by like this, knowing Spitzer would have injunctions on file to grab this hand-out, grab the homes and porsches, pick up the coke stash and porno collection of these wall street boys and sell it to pay the truly injured — the citizens — what do we think really happened with Spitzer?
Let’s look at the “Official Story.” (Great film from Argentina). The Official Story on Spitzer, as I recall, is that some minimum wage clerk at a desk in a bank “happened” to notice that Spitzer made or withdrew $10,000 a couple of times? I believe $10,000 is the amount that supposedly triggers the drug dogs to take a look.
But Spitzer is a very wealthy man, not to mention he was Governor. He probably took $10,000 as walking around money, for lunch, to go shoe-shopping, to take the kids to the toy store, for his wife to go to the spa for the day. I think he lives on 5th Avenue: that’s probably the monthly tip for the doorman or dogwalker. Who really believes that amount would have triggered the interest of some minimum wage clerk in the back room of a bank?
More likely is that the Bush regime used their friends in the Telecom Industry to put bugs, cameras, taps, spies, whatever in Spitzer’s home, office, cell phone, car, love nests, shoes, and everything else, to tape 24 hours/day, to be reviewed by federal employees or the Murder Squad of paid assassins at Blackwater, to find something to use against the guy and bring him down.
And that’s what happened. Spitzer used a hooker. BFD. Who cares? Spitzer did to that hooker just a tiny fraction of what the wall street boys did to the country. It’s like Spitzer got a blow job, and the rest of us were anally raped by gangs of men with broom handles (the “NYPD Special”).
Here’s what I think. I think it’s okay if Spitzer got a blow job. Or even if he had sex. With a hooker. With five hookers, if he’s up for it. That’s his wife’s business, not mine, and I don’t care.
I do care that it strongly appears that the federal government violated our laws and constitution, mis-used the federal investigative agencies to spy on a political opponent and set him up, and did so likely at the specific behest of the boys on Wall Street and for the purpose of making it easier for them to exit to their villas in Italy with the billions they’ve stolen without any organized state-funded effort to stop them or hold them accountable.
Prostitute my eye. Why is it that a woman who gives a guy a BJ for a few bucks is a “Prostitute,” but our politicians who collect millions of dollars in bribes to sell out the people of this country are called — Statesmen?
And if they got Spitzer, how many of our good-looking blow-dryed face-lifted capped-teeth and let’s face it in many cases not really all that bright Democrats also got nailed — so speak — while nailing a pro, or maybe a boyfriend (or girlfriend) as the case may be.
Elliott Spitzer should pull his head out of the ground. He wasn’t sentenced to the electric chair. He got embarrassed. Grow up Elliott, it’s a tough world out there. Most of us are humiliated on a daily basis. I’m humiliated just to think that Bush is the president. I’ll never live that one down. But nonetheless, most of us persevere, make an effort. Don’t roll over for these boys.
Elliott Spitzer should immediately find some representative citizens, communities, (maybe the group you keep writing about here), file a class action, get his butt back in gear and do what he is good at doing: going after the big boys in government and in wall street.
Think of Paul Newman in The Verdict: yes, they got him, they maimed him, they almost destroyed him, but in the end he stood on his integrity and did the right thing. The fall and redemption. Let’s start a “Draft Elliott” movement.
And one last thing for Elliot Spitzer to think about: revenge is a dish best eaten cold, savored, after your enemies have been vanquished. He could be the man — I mean “the” man. The position is open. Applicants sought. Nobody has more experience, skill, talent (and motivation) than Spitzer to go after these people and bring them down. I’ll bet there are millions of people who would love to help.
July 24th, 2008 at 3:34 pmIf it worked once …
Re: Draft Elliot Spitzer
The Republicans don’t want John Edwards on the ticket as VP with Obama. He’s a populist, he’s a good speaker, too likely to rile up the riff-raff they think we are. So what happens? Lots of public allegations that Edwards has had sex with someone other than his wife. Big story. Coincidence? Or just the same tactic used against Spitzer to get him out of the way?
July 24th, 2008 at 3:38 pmNABNYC - you rock…You don’t pull your unches and what’s more the recent past hasn’t faded from your memory banks like most of those who populate the MSM. I keep wondering what it;s going to take to wake up the American people? Liberals and conservatives, unless you’re in that top 1%, we are all being screwed and not one of the fat cats has even considered giving us a gentle kiss before ramming the shaft deeper.
July 28th, 2008 at 5:23 pmIt’s too bad too many Americans are hung up on sex. What has happened in this administration, that is the rank criminality, is somehow okay with the American public whereas the fact the old Billie Clinton was pilloried by Congress and the MSM because he received multiple bad blow jobs. It’s kind of like our justice system, that is just us on steroids!